A Plug for McCheyne’s Bible-Reading Schedule

I am about to get Carter* to print McCheyne’s scheme for reading through the Old Testament once and the New Testament twice in the year.  It includes family worship as well as private reading, and the table will do to paste up or hang in a book – though, as [McCheyne] issued it, it is a pamphlet, with remarks.  (Letter of April 2, 1845)

*Robert Carter (later, Robert Carter & Son), the New York publishing house.

From: Forty Years’ Familiar Letters of James W. Alexander, D.D., Constituting, with the Notes, a Memoir of His Life, edited by John Hall; 2 volumes (New York: Charles Scribner, 1860), 2:26.

 

The Death of Robert Murray McCheyne

Towards the close of his ministry, he was compelled to lessen his labours.  On March 13, 1843, he held a meeting in his church to collect on behalf of the Free Protestant Church in view of the inevitable disruption.  He took ill and was laid up of fever.  His illness increased, and the delirium came on.  During the delirium, he repeatedly prayed and exhorted as if he were preaching to the people.  On the morning of the 25th, his medical attendant, Dr. Gibson, noticed him lifting up his hands in silent supplication, and their falling down.  Beyond a quivering of the lip, there was nothing to indicate the temporary triumph of the last enemy of the Christian.  His soul was with Jesus, rejoicing in the Saviour whom he had exalted and loved on earth.  There was weeping in Dundee that day, and many days after.  But there was joy in heaven, an abundant entrance having been ministered unto one of the saints of the Most High!  May we be similarly chorussed into the regions of light!

From: “The Saintly McCheyne” by C. H. Spurgeon; reprinted in “The Banner of Truth” magazine, Issue 571 (April, 2011), p. 7.

Charles Haddon Spurgeon (1834-1892) the great Baptist pastor, was 8 years old when Robert Murray McCheyne (1813-1843), the pastor of St. Peter’s Presbyterian Church in Dundee, Scotland from 1836, died in March, 1843.